As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain. It is, I believe, the greatest of human inventions, and by far – much greater than Hell, the radio or the bichloride tablet.
New York is the place where all the aspirations of the western world meet to form one vast master aspiration, as powerful as the suction of a steam dredge. It is the icing on the pie called Christian civilization.
God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, and the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in his arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; he will set them above their betters.
The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.
When I mount the scaffold at last these will be my farewell words to the sheriff: Say what you will against me when I am gone, but don’t forget to add, in common justice, that I was never converted to anything.
The lunatic fringe wags the underdog.
The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true. The average man simply spends his leisure as a dog spends it. His recreations are all puerile, and the time supposed to benefit him really only stupefies him.
The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.
It is not the drinker, but the man who has just stopped drinking, who thinks the world is going to the dogs.
There is no record in history of a happy philosopher.
In the long run all battles are lost, and so are all wars.
The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craftsmen, but no artists. Can you imagine a Beethoven making $100, 000 a year?
Living with a dog is easy- like living with an idealist.
The military caste did not originate as a party of patriots, but as a party of bandits.
There is only one justification for having sinned, and that is to be glad of it.
It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind.
I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail.
The most popular man under a democracy is not the most democratic man, but the most despotic man. The common folk delight in the exactions of such a man. They like him to boss them. Their natural gait is the goose step.
A nun, at best, is only half a woman, just as a priest is only half a man.
It is impossible to believe that the same God who permitted His own son to die a bachelor regards celibacy as an actual sin.